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Double Dipping … again

by bvertz on Jan 18, 2009 • Comments Closed • ,

At the Pennsylvania Bar Association Family Law Section Winter Meeting 2009, which took place at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh this weekend, a panel of judges, lawyers and CPAs discussed hot topics in family law and business valuation. One of the hot topics, presented by Pittsburgh valuation professional Richard F. Brabender, was double dipping. Specifically, this seminar discussed the theoretical/academic argument (which I have advocated in this blog) that a double dip exists where capitalized income which has been divided between the spouses as marital property is also counted as income for child support or alimony purposes.

Clearly, if there is a pension in pay status which is valued on the date of trial, and the pension annuity benefit is counted as income for calculating post-divorce alimony, the court has divided the same stream of income twice – a “double dip.” This same problem exists where business profits have been capitalized as part of the valuation process and also included in the business owner’s net income for child support and alimony purposes.

The twist that Dick Brabender brought to light in his presentation was the double dip that may occur during the separation, where the owner’s compensation substantially exceeds a market salary. For instance, if a business owner is drawing $500,000 per year from the business, but could hired a newly-minted MBA (because we all know how they can improve any business) to do the owner’s job for $70,000 a year, then the owner is receiving excessive compensation of $430,000 per year. Why shouldn’t the business owner’s spouse get 50% of the excess compensation during the separation period as an advance against his or her share of the marital property (assuming the business is entirely marital), subject to re-allocation at the time of trial? (The excess compensation would then be excluded from both spouses’ incomes for support purposes.) This is the likely result if there were a marital pension in pay status, which could be divided 50/50 during the pendency of litigation as an advance of marital property.

In order to accomplish this interim division of the business income stream, the court would have to conduct a hearing to determine that the owner’s compensation were excessive, something the court is unlikely to decide in motions court. Moreover, the excess compensation hearing would have to occur prior to the support or maintenance hearing so that there were no inconsistencies between the support order and the property advance. One of the panelists, eastern Pennsylvania lawyer Mark Ashton, suggested that the court would also have to look at whether the rents being paid by the business to the owner were consistent with market levels, whether the owner were working more than 40 hours a week, etc. Suddenly a simple hearing to determine a property advance has become a multi-day trial with multiple expert witnesses!

Another panelist, Jay Blechman, suggested an alternative: a lookback at the time of the final property division trial. In other words, if it were proven at the end of the case that the owner’s compensation during the pendency of litigation was above-market, then the court could re-designate the excessive income as marital property and award an incremental amount to the owner’s spouse. In Pennsylvania, a business owner’s spouse without children would receive 40% of the income stream as support or maintenance, but if the excess compensation were marital property, the spouse might 50%, 55% or more. So, Jay Blechman suggested that the business owner’s spouse could get 40% during the pendency of the case, and an additional 10%, 15% or more of the excessive compensation at the end of the case.

No case law supports this idea yet.

Shadle – NAV Accepted by Divorce Court

by bvertz on Oct 2, 2008 • Comments Closed • , , , ,

In Shadle v. Shadle (108 PDDRR 102), a Bucks County divorce decision, the main issue was the valuation of an HVAC contracting business owned by the husband. The contracting business generated revenues from two primary sources: prepaid service contracts, and residential repair and replacement of HVAC systems. The company employed seven technicians, including the parties’ two adult sons. An ancillary issue was whether the husband had made an enforceable agreement with his sons to transfer the business to them upon his retirement.

On the latter issue, the trial court found no consideration for the promise made by husband to transfer the business to his sons. The trial court noted that each son had received adequate compensation for his services in the course of employment. The suggestion that the sons may have sacrificed other career opportunities in exchange for the promise was deemed speculative.

On the issue of valuation, there was a battle of experts. Wife’s expert considered three valuation approaches and concluded that the value of the business was $200,000. (The opinion does not reveal which approach(es) yielded this result.) The net asset approach, which is utilized when “liquidation is contemplated in the not-too-distant future,” as Wife’s expert explained, would yield a value of $130,000.

The testimony of Husband’s expert is not discussed at all in the opinion.

The trial court found that the fair market value of the HVAC business was equal to the NAV of $130,000, reasoning that “Husband will likely transfer the business to his sons rather than an independent buyer at some point in the future.” The trial court thus demonstrated a misunderstanding of valuation concepts, overlooking the fact that all parties contemplated an ongoing concern, not liquidation. It will be interesting to see whether the Superior Court of Pennsylvania reverses this erroneous decision, and whether, on remand, the issue of personal goodwill is raised.

Valuation Held Preferable to Judicial Sale

by bvertz on Jun 11, 2008 • Comments Closed • , ,

In Parker v. Parker, 980 So.2d 323 (Miss.App. 2008), the Mississippi Court of Appeals held that the trial court should not have ordered a judicial sale of businesses that were marital property in a divorce action. The trial court sold the businesses because the parties failed to comply with an order directing them to obtain accurate and up-to-date business valuations. On appeal, the Mississippi court held that the trial court could have appointed a business valuation professional or divided the property in kind.

Battle of the “Rules of Thumb” in North Dakota

by bvertz on Jun 1, 2008 • Comments Closed • , ,

In Evenson, a recent decision of the North Dakota Supreme Court, the business which was implicated in a divorce action was an insurance agency. The business owner sold multi-peril crop insurance through local banks for which the owner had previously worked. Both valuation experts agreed that insurance agencies are generally valued by applying a multiplier to the agency’s gross commissions over a period of time.

The wife of the insurance agent testified that a 1.75 multiplier should be applied to an average of gross commissions over the best three consecutive years in the agency’s five year history. (Yes, I said that the wife herself testified.) Her expert testified that 1.5 would be an appropriate multiplier, and 1.75 was “in the upper range.”

The husband testified that a multiplier of 1.0 should be applied to the agency’s gross commissions over the first four years (including the agency’s worst year). The trial court instead applied a multiplier of 1.0 to the agency’s gross commissions in the most recent year (which was neither the best nor the worst, but closer to the worst than to the average). The trial court chose the 1.0 multiplier based on evidence of growing loss ratios, a steady decrease in commission rates, and the testimony of an insurance manager that 1.0 would be an appropriate multiplier under current market conditions.

Finding sufficient evidence to support the verdict, the appellate court sustained the trial court’s decision.